The official census won’t take place until 2020, but all of the states and major municipalities have yearly population data which gives them a good idea which direction they are heading. Baltimore, Maryland is no exception and both Charm City and the Old Line State are preparing for another dip in their headcount as compared to other parts of the country. That’s bad news, both in terms of congressional representation and federal resource allocation. But why is it happening?

David Placher, writing at the Baltimore Sun, offers some of the obvious reasons for the decline and then goes one step further by suggesting some solutions. First we tackle the puzzle as to why people are leaving and others are less willing to move to Baltimore. The easiest answer is that one that’s in the news regularly. Baltimore is in the running for being the murder capital of the United States. This isn’t just draining their population via so many people being the guests of honor at funerals. It also makes others think more seriously about heading where there are fewer bullets flying around.

The city’s scary record of 343 homicides in 2017 affirms the city’s well-known reputation as a dangerous place to live. Even if 2018 has fewer homicides, it doesn’t take a fortune teller to predict that this year’s homicide rate will be high. Until the city substantially reduces its homicide and other crimes rates, people will continue to view the city as dangerous and be reluctant to stay or move here.

It might be tempting to mock David for stating the obvious, but seriously… somebody has to say it. And you won’t hear it from the Mayor or the City Council, who still insist their violence reduction plans are on track and things are going to start improving any day now. But even if Baltimore flipped a magic switch and became one of the lowest crime cities in the country overnight, there are still other basic factors driving or keeping people away. Placher lists these additional items which should have been obvious.

The city’s outrageous property tax of $2.248 per $100 of a property’s assessed value is more than double of its surrounding jurisdictions: Baltimore County, $1.10, and Anne Arundel 90.7 cents. The city’s burdensome property tax on homeowners explains why the city has more renters than homeowners. The city’s high income tax is 3.2 percent, the maximum allowed by law. Baltimore County’s is 2.83 and Anna Arundel’s is 2.56. The city’s tax message is clear: Move here and pay higher taxes. People have figured out how to avoid the city’s taxes and still enjoy the city. They live in surrounding counties and take reasonably priced ridesharing services into the city.

The city’s tax rates are, as Placher describes it, outrageous. And the amount of value the residents receive in the form of services, safety and quality of living doesn’t rise to anywhere near the level that would be justified at such a price. It’s easy enough to avoid paying all those taxes if you simply stop living in Baltimore or refuse to move there to begin with. Commuting is the far more attractive option if you must work there or seek out recreational activities in the city.

Beyond the taxes, David notes that the city’s public school system is “a disaster.” Some schools produced zero students who met the state minimum proficiency levels in math last year. Zero students. Further, the infrastructure is rotten, with regular water main breaks, potholes and sinkholes which make roads a nightmare and buildings untrustworthy. At the same time, residents watched the mayor and city council vote themselves pay raises last year.

Placher’s solutions are bold but will be unpopular with politicians. He suggests proposals such as turning the City Hall and Courthouse into museums to raise revenue, relocating the city officials to abandoned buildings in need of renovation. He also proposes tempting a college to move a campus into the city, refurbishing some of the abandoned industrial buildings for their use. Public housing near hospitals could be repurposed as retirement homes conveniently located near medical care and public transit. These are all big, bold plans which would require money and political willpower, but it could clean out some of the higher crime areas and restore them to normal order.

Sound crazy? No crazier than asking people to stay in or move to decrepit areas where the tax rates are only surpassed by the murder rate. Baltimore is floundering and someone needs to figure out a way to stamp out the gang activity and restore the city’s lost vitality. This could be a start.

Police departments attempt to respond to the issue of gun violence in cities.

"Shotspotter", uses technology to identify live gunfire and communicate that to police for faster response....what could be wrong with that?

Quote:

As we’ve seen far too often in Charm City, Shotspotter was opposed by some legislators, mostly from Baltimore County. Their claims that the placement of the technology in primarily minority neighborhoods was racist ring rather hollow when you consider where the majority of the gun crimes take place. And if the Baltimore PD can begin responding in minutes to gunfire anywhere in the city and not risk missing attacks where nobody calls the cops, they really might finally start bringing those homicide numbers down.

Of course its racist....

What else?:

Quote:

Other cities already using the system have identified another significant reason to use Shotspotter in conjunction with normal law enforcement routines. Cincinnati police have been using it since last August and they identified another disturbing trend in urban law enforcement. They reported that most gunshots go unreported and nearby residents called 911 in only one in six incidents. With this audio technology in place, they learned that too many locals are not calling 911 when they hear gunfire, meaning that there is probably more gun violence taking place than they knew and their chances of responding in a timely fashion were greatly decreased.

Post subject: Re: Riot-Plagued Baltimore Is a Catastrophe Entirely of the

Posted: Sun Jun 03, 2018 12:46 pm

Sergeant Major

Joined: Fri Dec 05, 2008 3:19 pmPosts: 31260Reputation points: 19875

Property taxes are bad enough but the City income tax is preposterous. Then you add a Mayor who deliberately allowed rioting and destruction of property to continue in order to pacify the locals. Doesn't help to have a famous violent crime show based in Baltimore (The Wire).

Don't think it helps either if you advertise to the Baltimore PD they will be charged with a felony for arresting a black man.

_________________I haven't figured out how to the block thingy works but if anyone alters my posts I will become really, really angry and throw monkey poop out of my cage.

The murder rate in Baltimore, Maryland is down somewhat this year, which is definitely welcome news. But the news isn’t all that great because they’re still sitting at 260 murders with two months to go, on track to come in below the horrific record of 342 they set last year. And 260 still puts them well ahead of New York City, which has more than 15 times the population. So why is this still happening?

Rather than going to politicians for excuses, the Baltimore Sun looks at the tragic story of Dawn Ponsi and her one-woman crusade to have the city and the state get tougher on crime. Dawn’s son Robert was riding his bicycle home from work in 2016 when he saw someone being robbed by a gang of youths with knives. Robert stopped and tried to break up the encounter, but the gang turned on him and stabbed him to death with more than a dozen knife wounds. Three of the juveniles were charged with his murder and initially charged as adults. Two of them were acquitted entirely and the third one, Prince Greene, wound up doing 12 months before being released. Police later revealed that the young killer had ditched a backpack containing a loaded handgun near the scene of the murder.

Dawn Ponsi said a judge transferred her son’s accused killer to the juvenile system where she said he was out of detention “in 12 months.”

“My son’s case should have been enough to highlight the problems of this system,” Ponsi said. “But apparently it wasn’t,”

“Because a witness backed out, during the trials, it was not disclosed that he stopped to save someone else who was being robbed by this gang of teenagers, and he lost his life in doing so,” his mom said.

Ponsi has been tracking other recent cases of underage killers who were released after very little time behind bars who went on to kill again. And she wants something done about it.

Governor Larry Hogan had been criticizing judges over lax punishments in the juvenile justice system only the day before the newspaper spoke with Ponsi. It’s a campaign he’s been working on for quite some time now. In 2017 he was trying to push through a “Truth in Sentencing” bill which was widely opposed by legislators in the Baltimore area. The judges, for their part, refused to even meet with the Governor and said that the high murder rates aren’t their fault.

But how do they expect to cut down on violent crime when they keep putting the same people out on the streets over and over again with what essentially amounts to a slap on the wrist? That’s the question Hogan would like answered. It’s the question Dawn Ponsi is asking. And it’s the question the rest of us should be asking as well.

_________________The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.- misattributed to Alexis De Tocqueville

No representations made as to the accuracy of info in posted news articles or links

One of Baltimore’s newest deputy police commissioners and his wife were robbed at gunpoint Friday night near Patterson Park, police said.

Deputy Commissioner Daniel Murphy and his wife were approached around 9 p.m. by four men in a large white SUV at the 2200 block of East Pratt Street, police said in a statement. Two approximately 18-year-old men got out of the SUV and approached the couple. The men announced it was a robbery and showed a gun before fleeing with a wallet, a purse, some cash and multiple cell phones, the press release said.

No one was injured.

Murphy was one of the first top deputies hired earlier this year by Commissioner Michael Harrison, and the two men worked together in the New Orleans police department. In New Orleans, Murphy was the deputy superintendent of compliance for its consent decree, and was tapped by Harrison to oversee the Baltimore Police Department’s compliance with its own, similar federal consent decree.

In an April interview with the Sun, Murphy talked about the similarities between the two cities, and the challenges.

“I think the challenges are very similar” in Baltimore and New Orleans, Murphy said. “Obviously, every community, every police department is unique, but the success we had in New Orleans is directly transferable to here and we will modify it as necessary.”

Southeast District detectives are heading the investigation. Anyone with information is asked to call detectives at 410-396-2422.

Those who wish to remain anonymous can call the Metro Crime Stoppers tip line, at 1-866-7LOCKUP.

You can also submit a tip by texting 443-902-4824.

_________________The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.- misattributed to Alexis De Tocqueville

No representations made as to the accuracy of info in posted news articles or links

The ongoing social media battle between President Trump and Congressman Elijah Cummings of Maryland has drawn in all sorts of supporters on both sides and provided more than a few amusing moments. One of the most recent spun off from a claim that the President made about Baltimore (Cummings’ home town) having a higher murder rate than some of the most dangerous places in the western hemisphere. It actually came from the White House account, not Trump’s personal one.

The White House✔@WhiteHouse The murder rate in Baltimore is higher than that of Honduras, El Salvador, or Guatemala—the three Central American nations driving our border surge.

Democrats have run Baltimore for 5 decades. It's time for accountability.

As usual, this had heads exploding among democrats who rushed to defend Cummings and claim that the President was “lying” again. Unfortunately for them, at least a few media outlets did their homework and went to fact check the numbers. CBS in Baltimore did the required digging and was forced to concede the unpleasant truth. The President was right. (Emphasis added)

WJZ reviewed data from 2018, the last full year for which data is available. Data from the U.S. State Department’s Overseas Security Advisory Council lists El Salvador’s murder rate at 50 per 100,000 residents in 2018.

Honduras’ 2018 murder rate was not included in OSAC’s annual crime and safety report published in April, but a report from the Observatory of Violence at the National Autonomous University of Honduras gave a figure of 41.4 murders per 100,000 residents.

HOW DOES BALTIMORE COMPARE?

Charm City ended 2018 with a total of 309 murders, according to the Baltimore Police Department. So far in 2019, police report 196 homicides have occurred. Using the U.S. Census Bureau’s July 2018 population estimate for the city of 602,495, Baltimore’s 2018 murder rate is 51.3 murders per 100,000 residents.

The article ends with two simple words. CLAIM: TRUE.

This is yet another example of a phenomenon we’ve become accustomed to seeing. If the President goes after any individual, organization or even city or country, Democrats and their allies in the media will immediately leap to the defense of the perceived target. Sometimes that works out for them in the media wars because President Trump does say some odd things from time to time. But that knee-jerk reaction also gets them into trouble.

We recently saw that when cable news hosts, newspapers and even Democratic presidential candidates rushed to the defense of Al Sharpton after Trump called him a con man. Seriously? Have any of you actually followed Al Sharpton’s career? That would have been a good time to stay on the bench and hold your tongues. Eventually, both the Washington Post and the New York Times felt compelled to publish op-eds questioning why Democrats were rushing to Sharpton’s defense.

This phenomenon is what Seth Mandell recently referred to as the Trump “unendorsement.” When Trump attacks someone, others rush to their defense under the terrible theory that the enemy of my enemy must be my hero. This leads to many mouths gathering feet.

When it comes to defending Baltimore, I don’t know what most of these critics were thinking. Regular readers know that I’ve been covering Baltimore politics and culture here for years and the President’s claims about it being plagued by violence, crime, drugs, and even rats came as no surprise to me. These endemic problems have been in place for longer than many residents can remember. Trump is also correct that Baltimore has been completely under the control of one party (the Democrats) for a very long time. Three of their last four mayors have left office either facing criminal charges or under a cloud of controversy and failure. (As with Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and her failure in handling the Freddie Gray riots.)

Attack Trump if you feel you must, but before you rush to proclaim Baltimore some sort of success story, get your facts in order. Parts of it are nice enough, but the rough areas on the east and west sides are pretty much war zones.

_________________The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.- misattributed to Alexis De Tocqueville

No representations made as to the accuracy of info in posted news articles or links

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